Week 32 - ITF ($25K) - Landisville, USA Hard

Mervatron · Masters Series Champion

Week 32 - ITF ($25K) - Landisville, USA Hard

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

wolf wrote:
[...]
Ken Thomas' Quick Take

"Also, If you haven't heard yet...BBC tennis commentator Paul Hand was removed from the Rio Olympic broadcast for homophobic comments. What is it with British tennis media? Remember back in 2014, when Neil Harman admitted to plagiarism when writing for the Wimbledon Annual Yearbook? A few years back, I had some communication with BBC commentator David Law. All David Law cared about was protecting his media credential and isolating the BBC from any outside source. Now you have Paul Hand. All these so-called "British tennis media experts" are mediocre at best. The British public deserve better. British tennis fans are some of the most passionate and intelligent tennis fans in the world. Yet, British media organizations keep serving up these guys (no pun intended). David Law, Neil Harman and now Paul Hand. The BBC, Wimbledon and the LTA should take a serious look at who they place in these positions. Barbara Slater - Director of BBC Sport, should stop delegating these decisions and get actively involved in the selection process. Maybe...just maybe... Barbara should start with hiring commentators who have a media background and have actually played competitive tournament tennis."
"Barbara call me. I have both. Game on.... Day 4 from Landisville. It should be wonderful !"

Putting it mildly, that was extremely unfair to David Law, equating him to a plagiarist and a homophobe, for what seemes like little more than a personal difference. Harman & hand - fair comment.
I always enjoy Ken's commentary, but that was out of order.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

To be fair, I guess it was Ken who had the direct contact with David Law and was highly unimpressed so at least he's talking from personal experience.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Oh, I don't doubt that, but being useless, or uncooperative - in someone's opinion - in no way equates to plagiarism or homophobia.

-- Edited by AliBlahBlah on Wednesday 10th of August 2016 03:01:15 PM

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

On court, meanwhile, Laura has lost another set, where the court was apparently inexplicably too short, too narrow and the net too high 3-6

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

AliBlahBlah wrote:
Oh, I don't doubt that, but being useless, or uncooperative - in someone's opinion - in no way equates to plagiarism or homophobia.

-- Edited by AliBlahBlah on Wednesday 10th of August 2016 03:01:15 PM

Possibly.

And not wanting to distract from Laura's match (although it's not great watching) but I do feel that sometimes we put too much emphasis on throw-away bad comments which are unacceptable but are just one-off comments.

And not enough emphasis on systematic abuse of power and incompetence.

I'm not being really specific to Paul Hands or David Law here but, in general, I think confirmed incompetence and corporation-endorsed refusal to abide by the rules, and abuse of privilege etc. etc. are more important, overall, than a single misplaced homophobic or racist comment. And, yes, I know it's skating on thin ice and Paul Hands most definitely deserves to lose his job - no one wants to hear that. But I find the other far more worrying. And something there is seemingly far less that we can do to combat (again, not specific as such to Law or the BBC)

PaulM · Tennis legend

Laura is all out terrible.

She shouldn't be spending her playing days anywhere other than Sharm really until she's stringing wins together. Bonkers putting her into these US ITFs when she's so low on confidence and matchplay - no idea who's been advising her but anyone who's seen her since her comeback could tell you she's barely a $10k quarter final player at the moment, her ranking is massively inflated by 10pt first round counters.

She needs some match court time against pretty weak opposition to get the winning feeling back and to help her build some rhythm up, and bring the quality we are told exists on practice courts to matches. Seems like a no brainer to me from the outside looking in!

-- Edited by PaulM on Wednesday 10th of August 2016 03:18:54 PM

the addict · Tennis legend

To be honest, I've seen better matches on the British Tour. A few good shots, and then some bad ones - not going to be a good result today

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

There's a glaring lack of rigour in her play.

(Lykina is not great either).

PaulM · Tennis legend

the addict wrote:
Can't find it on the stream - only one of the other matches, Vickery v Xu

where were you watching this match out of interest?

PaulM · Tennis legend

Laura's now a year into her comeback, and won 9 matches. She should be better than this at this stage, not necessarily in ranking, a rank of around 400 or so would be fine if she was winning matches weekly in 10ks or qualies say, but in terms of progress in parts of her game improving and starting to fall back into place.

There's nothing better really now than 8-10months ago.

the addict · Tennis legend

PaulM wrote:
the addict wrote:
Can't find it on the stream - only one of the other matches, Vickery v Xu
where were you watching this match out of interest?

This match https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWvRu2yaUrg thanks to AliBlahBlah

V v X on http://videostream.dn.ua/videopage/videoPage.php

Nothing today on https://www.usta.com/Pro-Tennis/Pro-Circuit/2016_pro_circuit_womens_live_streaming/

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Laura did very well not to get broken when Lykina had two BPs early in the second.

It's given her a chance, which she didn't have in the first.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Those were really nasty double faults by the Russian.

Laura breaks and will serve for the second set.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Game nine of set 2, Lykina served 4 DF, but more importantly, Laura played almost every other point well, and put consistent big shots together for multiple points in a row, and won the game. Very faint encouragement, because even that's not been happening, but I'll take that glimmer.
Close it out now, having earned the chance.
3-6 *5-4